The Secrets of Magic
by Skittishly
Summary: Two children learn to control their "accidental" magic before they ever even hear about Hogwarts. What shenanigans will ensue when both muggleborns are sorted into Slytherin? And what is this about one of them being Wiccan? Post-war, pre-epilogue. Follows canon. Mostly OCs.


**Summary:** Jade, a girl from a Wiccan family, and Connor, a boy with do-as-you-please parents, discover they have real, abra kadabra magic before ever getting their Hogwarts letters. By learning to control their accidental magic, they create their very own brand of magic. Once they get to Hogwarts, the two muggleborns are sorted into Slytherin. How exactly will the cultures of Wiccan magick and wizarding magic mix? How will muggleborns survive in Slytherin, where the remnants of blood purism still brew? What will this new, unconstrained magic mean for wizardkind? The story starts several years after the war and before the epilogue, and apart from my interpretations of accidental and wandless magic, strictly follows the canon. The characters are almost entirely OCs.

**Disclaimer:** Just playing in J.K. Rowling's sandbox. Also, some of the ideas for this story came from the first few chapters of anix113's _Rising Powers_.

**Author's Note:** Yes, the use of the word magick with a 'k' is intentional. Many pagans and wiccans use this as a way of separating illusionary magic tricks from true magick. As such, when the story is in Jade's perspective or when she is the one talking, she will often use magick rather than magic. Now, without further ado, I present…

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**Chapter I: Finding Magic**

Book bag slung over one shoulder, Connor prepared for yet another useless day at school. It wasn't like someone with magic would ever need to know any of the nonsense they taught in schools, he thought smugly. What he didn't admit to himself was that he really still believed in education, magic or no, which was why he was now trudging through the street, stifling a huge yawn.

It had been two months since Connor had fully mastered his magic. Before, he had required an emotional trigger to bend the magic to his will. That had been the problem, really. Magic wasn't about will—or at least, that wasn't the whole of it. Things didn't happen if he just wanted it badly enough. He had to twist and fold his magic into the right shape before it would do what he wanted. It just so happened, he had eventually figured out, that his emotions triggered some kind of magical instinct. With that instinct, he would unknowingly shape his magic to do what he needed. Not to mention the part where he first had to _find_ the magic. It was hidden in his core, which he usually couldn't reach without that emotional instinct to guide him. Ironically, it had taken a book on meditation—essentially the opposite of extreme emotion—to find the source of the magic on his own. Connor would be forever grateful to whoever had invented libraries. He smiled, mentally delving into his magical core. He did that every now and then, just to check that it was really still there. As always, the warm, rippling energy was right there, waiting for his command.

Connor returned his attention to the world around him, looking both ways before crossing the street. Spring was finally coming 'round, and colour and warmth were beginning to creep back into the world. Unfortunately, his pleasant day would be spent largely indoors. He sighed. He doubted his parents would care if he just ditched classes for the day. They always let Connor do whatever he wanted, and for some reason the seven-year-old couldn't figure out, he never did anything bad with his freedom. He went to school, did his homework, kept his room neat, and even ate sensibly. He wondered, sometimes, if having nothing forbidden to him just made being "bad" less fun. Or maybe it was just him; Connor's idea of fun seemed to differ from his classmates' quite often. The other children always thought him queer for watching educational programs instead of kids' programs, but Connor had always found telly series like _How It's Made_ to be quite fascinating.

Finally at school, Connor plunged himself into the routine of the day. It wasn't until lunchtime that he had any reason to suspect that today would be anything other than a perfectly normal day of school. He sat his lunch tray down next to a small girl—the blond sprite didn't quite look seven. Her name was Levitt, he recalled, and the girl on her other side, talking animatedly to Levitt, was Miller. He tuned them out. Connor didn't believe in _cooties_, or anything silly like that, but he wisely recognized that seven-year-old girls were an alien race to seven-year-old boys.

Letting his mind wander, Connor became aware of a ticklish sensation running across the skin of his right arm. He frowned and pushed back his shirtsleeve. He had goose bumps, despite the quite mild temperature in the room. He rubbed his arm and tried to keep eating, but the sensation wouldn't leave him alone. With a sigh, he tried looking around for a fan or air vent that might be blowing cool air on his arm. He could find no source of air flow in the vicinity. His eyebrows furrowed in thought, he concentrated harder on the strange feeling. It certainly wasn't cold air. It was almost like…

Magic.

Connor stared hard at Levitt, sitting on his right side. There was really no outward sign, apart from the bumps on his arm, that she might have magic. As an experiment, Connor dipped into his magical core and grasped a strand of it, not to use it, but just to be in contact with the magic.

Suddenly, the tingling sensation on his arm came into focus. He couldn't quite describe it. He certainly wasn't _seeing_ the magic in and around Levitt, though it amounted to much the same. He supposed the closest words for it were that he could _feel_ the magic radiating off of her, not unlike a fan blowing cold air at him. And he knew—just like he might look in the direction of a breeze, see a fan, and know that it was the cause—he _knew_ that the small girl beside him had magic.

"—re you okay, Burrell? What's your name—Connor, right? Connor Burrell?"

A voice cut through Connor's concentration, and he blinked. He finally noticed a hand waving inches from his nose. "Oh, er, um, I mean…yeah. Yeah, I'm Connor."

Levitt dropped her hand and smiled at Connor, looking rather relieved. Several snickers from different parts of the table let him know that his strange behaviour hadn't gone unnoticed. Connor looked down at his lap before they could see the blush rising in his cheeks. "Are you all right, Connor?" the girl asked, still smiling. It wasn't a mocking smile, though. Just a friendly one, and perhaps a touch concerned. "You were staring at me like you'd seen a ghost or something."

"I'm fine!" Connor quickly assured her. Since they were now apparently on a first name basis, Connor struggled to remember Levitt's name. Jodie? Jane? No, not quite. "I'm really sorry; I was kind of…daydreaming. I didn't mean to stare at you or anything."

Levitt, whatever her first name was, nodded in sympathy. "I understand completely. Emma here will tell you that I've done more than my fair share of daydreaming. I don't think we've ever really talked before. I'm Jade Levitt, and this is Emma—I mean, Emily Miller," she announced, gesturing first at herself, then at her brown-haired friend.

Relieved that he wouldn't have to ask for her name, Connor smiled at the girls. "Connor Burrell. But you already remembered that." They had only been in the same class together for months, after all. He really should have remembered her name.

"Hey, Jade," the brunette simpered, calling her friend's attention away from Connor. "I know how much you _love_ these fruit cups. Don't you want to make a trade? Those chocolate biscuits of yours look really good!" Jade laughed at her friend's poorly concealed motives, and the girls were soon too caught up in bargaining to pay any attention to their new acquaintance. That suited Connor just fine. Careful to keep his eyes on his food, Connor let his thoughts wander again. There was really no doubt about it. Jade had magic, too. Did she know already? Had she mastered it yet? He would have to find a way to get her alone to approach the subject.

It turned out that getting Jade alone was not an easy task. Though Miller was easily her best friend, she seemed to also be mates with just about everyone else in the class. Any time they were doing partnered work, she had a partner before Connor could even look her way. During their outside breaks, if she wasn't immediately invited to join a game or activity, she started one of her own. She spent the entirety of every lunch with Miller, give or take a few others. She was dropped off and picked up from school by her parents. She was never just by herself, so getting her alone would require Connor to walk up to her in front of all her friends and ask for a private word. And _that_, he was sure, would result in eavesdroppers. Maybe he could get a note to her discreetly enough not to draw anyone else's attention?

Having come up with no better plan, Connor awaited his chance. Meanwhile, he watched Jade. She really was quite popular. She had friends everywhere she looked. Her parents actually dropped her off _and_ picked her up, every day. Connor wasn't sure he could remember the last time his parents had done as much, not specifically. The teacher seemed to like her a lot, too. She participated in class without being an attention-seeker or a clown or even a know-it-all, and the teacher basked in her student's behaviour like a cat in the sun.

Summing it all up like that, Connor couldn't help a small grimace. Did he really want to let such a perfect, popular princess in on his secret? Worse, would the chatty girl agree that it should be a secret? On the other hand, if she already knew about her magic, maybe she would have some tips for him. He admitted that he was really quite curious about what Jade might know how to do. So far, the only things Connor had done (on purpose) were little, like making snacks and toys appear out of thin air, or moving things without ever touching them, or even making his book bag weigh less as he walked to and from school. What if Jade had thought of something even more wonderful to do with her magic? No, Connor was going to have to at least talk to Jade Levitt.

###

Art was by far Jade's favourite subject. They didn't do it every day, and when they did it was always tied into some other lesson, but the chance to draw, cut, and colour never failed to brighten the girl's day. Today they had to write about their plans for the summer break coming up in just a couple weeks. Once the teacher came by and stamped off their work, they were to draw a picture to accompany the words. Jade scribbled her answer down as fast as she could, barely pausing to remember what her parents had told her about going to Pleasure Beach that year. Finally done, with a bright blue A+ stamp next to her writing, Jade reverently pulled out her felt pens, colour pencils, and wax crayons. She used the time it took to set up her supplies to picture it in her mind: a Ferris Wheel backed by ocean waves, all glinting in the light of the setting sun. The lights in the park would just be turning on. She wished she had a picture to reference, but she would just get to make it up, instead.

She was so engrossed in her picture, she almost didn't notice the hand in her pocket. She jumped, ready to stab whoever it was with her pencil as she turned to find…empty air. But she knew that trick. She rounded on the person sitting next to her on her other side. "What was that for?" she demanded.

Noah looked up from his own drawing, a stick-figure family holding hands in front of a box-and-triangle house, so stare at his friend. "What do you mean?" he asked, the confusion evident in his voice.

Jade rolled her eyes. "Nice try. I know it was you."

This only made the poor boy look more confused. She hadn't known that Noah was such a clever actor. "You put your hand in my pocket," she clarified, imitating her sister Amy when the older girl explained something "obvious" to Jade. "And for the record, that trick where you tap someone on the opposite shoulder so that she thinks it was the person sitting on her other side? That only works when there's someone actually _sitting on her other side_." She smiled conspiratorially at the boy to lighten her accusation and, hopefully, encourage him to admit to his actions.

Noah was already shaking his head before she had finished speaking. "Seriously, Jade, I didn't do it. I don't _want_ to know what you girls keep in your pockets. No offense," he tacked on as an afterthought.

Now it was Jade's turn to look confused. "But I felt a hand," she told him, her own hand snaking into her pocket. She found a folded piece of paper there, one that did not belong to her. Startled, she scanned the room. Nobody but Noah was close enough to have pulled it off, unless….

She watched uncertainly as Connor Burrell finished sharpening his pencil and returned to his desk. His path took him right past Jade. Well, there was only one way to figure this out. She took the bit of paper from her pocket, unfolded it, and read the messily scrawled note there.

_JL-_

_If you believe in magic, meet me at Wellwater Park  
after school today. I'll wait for you until 6._

_-CB_

What.

Jade turned huge eyes on the boy, too startled to recognize his obvious desire for secrecy. He met her gaze long enough to roll his eyes at her, and then proceeded to ignore her. Only the teacher's call of "Five minutes!" roused Jade from her shock. Promising herself she would get to the bottom of this later, she turned her attention back to her drawing. Not even circumstances strange as these would keep the girl from her precious artwork for long.

But then, the therapeutic task of colouring in sun-touched waves left her thoughts plenty of room to wander. _Magic, _Jade wondered to herself. _Well. This should be interesting._

It occurred to Jade, as she spotted Connor sitting on a swing that afternoon, that if she had chosen to ignore the boy's invitation, Connor would have supposedly waited up to five hours after the end of school for her. As it was, she had asked Mum to drop her off at the park rather than take her straight home from school, so Connor couldn't have been waiting for her longer than just a few minutes. He looked up as Jade drew closer, and he seemed almost surprised to see her. He quickly slipped from the swing and met her at the edge of the sandbox. Jade immediately folded her arms and raised her brows at him expectantly, and was satisfied to see him smile sheepishly in return. At least he seemed aware of how entirely _queer_ his written request had been.

They faced each other in silence for a minute, as Connor apparently gathered his thoughts. Finally, he began with an ever-so-eloquently mumbled, "Um, hey."

Jade's eyebrows shot up again. "Hey yourself," she commented offhandedly. "So, are you going to explain what all that was about, earlier today, or are you going to stand there all afternoon?"

He had the good grace to blush, and Jade, determining that she'd teased the boy enough, let her arms fall to her pockets and watched him in open curiosity. It seemed to comfort him a bit, because he finally started explaining himself. "Sorry about that. I just wasn't expecting you get here so soon," he admitted. "I'm glad you came, though. I've been wanting to talk to you for a while, now."

"About magic?" Jade prompted, eager to get answers at last. Connor nodded.

"Yeah. You…do you believe in magic?" From the way he was watching her now, her answer obviously meant a lot to the boy.

As such, she considered her response for a moment before slowly responding. "I suppose I do. What I don't get is why you had to drag me all the way out here to ask me, or why you care so much."

Connor let out a long breath from puffed cheeks. He wasn't sure how he had envisioned this meeting going, but he was pretty sure this wasn't it. "Well, you see…the thing is, I can actually _do_ magic." It wasn't an easy thing to say. The last time he'd confided in anyone about his ability, some two years ago, his parents had completely blown him off. They hadn't believed him for even the second it would have taken them to be surprised by what he'd said.

From Jade's suddenly blank expression and blinking eyes, Connor gathered that this was not how she'd seen this conversation going, either. "Oh," was her only response for several seconds. Then, "Well, even if I believe in magic, I hope you don't expect me to believe that _you_ can actually do it without some proof."

Well, at least she was giving him a chance to earn her trust. Relieved, Connor rummaged through his brain for the right bit of magic. He raised his hand palm-up and, without any of the dramatic flairs that magicians used to hide their tricks, conjured a candy bar into his hand. "Chocolate?" he offered, unable to keep the smile from his face as he watched Jade's jaw drop. Her gaze flickered from Connor to the candy and back again several times before settling, eyes narrowed, on the boy.

"Actually, I'm rather fond of cotton candy," she challenged.

Connor's smile only widened, and a moment later, the chocolate was replaced with a bit of blue fluff. "It's all yours," he informed her, gesturing for her to give it a try.

Determined to call the boy's bluff, Jade took the sticky fluff and popped it in her mouth. It indeed tasted like cotton candy, and she knew that the likelihood of Connor carrying the cotton candy around on the off chance that she'd request some was admittedly small. She stared at the smug boy before her, and suddenly found herself blurting out, "But you can't _do_ that! That's just not how it works!"

Connor's brows wrinkled in confusion, and Jade sighed. She supposed she might as well come out and say it. As the boy apparently really _could_ do magick, she supposed it wouldn't do any harm. She drew herself up to her full height—still shorter than Connor—and mentally prepared herself for her declaration.

"I am a witch," she informed the stunned boy before her, "and that is _not_ how magick works."

Silence hung in the air after that admission. A thousand questions and demands buzzed through Connor's mind, until he wasn't sure what to say. Finally—"You're a witch. What does that mean, exactly?"

Jade sighed, took Connor's arm, and led him to a bench. When they had both taken a seat, the girl fished something from the collar of her shirt, and then held it out for Connor to see. Curiosity aroused, he leaned forward. It was a silver pendant, he noticed, hanging from a cord around Jade's neck. It was a five-pointed star wrought of overlapping lines, surrounded by a circle. It was pretty, but it didn't explain anything to Connor, who looked back up at Jade in continued confusion.

The girl nodded to herself, as if his lack of understanding meant something to her. "This star is called a pentacle," she began explaining. "It's a symbol of my religion…Wicca, or Witchcraft."

"Witchcraft is a religion?" he asked, dumbfounded. His parents sometimes took him to church on the weekends, and that was the extent of Connor's knowledge of religions. There were Christians, the people who believed that their God, Jesus, died on a cross. There were the Jewish, who believed in the same God but not in Jesus. And there were a handful of other, exotic religions whose names he couldn't quite remember, and whose faiths he knew nothing about. But he was fairly certain that none of them had been Witchcraft.

Jade just nodded, uncertain how to explain her family's beliefs. She had never had to, before. "Wiccans, or witches, believe in a God and a Goddess with many different names and traits. They can be anything, really, but together they always encompass the male and female aspects of nature. So I guess you could say that they're nature gods," Jade reflected aloud. "Witches celebrate nature, and the interconnectedness of all things. That is…" she trailed off, realizing how confusing that must be to someone who had never heard of the idea before. "I guess by interconnectedness, I mean that everything, living or non-living, has a kind of energy, and that these energies can…sort of interact with each other. When witches use their energy to…ask the energy around them to do something, and the energy responds, that's what we call magick." She paused to make sure Connor was following along. He still looked confused, but he seemed to understand what she'd said so far.

Jade gave the boy another minute of silence to try to make sense of everything she'd said. "Okay," he said eventually, "so you're a witch, and you use…energy, whatever that means exactly, to do magic." When Jade gave her silent confirmation to what he'd said, he continued along that line of thought. "You ask the energies of things around you to do something, and then they do it. So how is that different from me asking candy to appear in my hand?"

"That's the thing," Jade insisted. "You shouldn't be able to do that! You can only ask things to do something they're already capable of, like asking a plant to grow strong and healthy, or asking an injury to heal quickly and without infection. And _then_ you have to _help _it do that, by taking care of the plant or putting medicine on the injury! You're supposed to meet the magic halfway. What you did with the chocolate and the cotton candy—that's not _natural_. You can't ask energy to do something against the rules of nature! Or, I suppose you can ask, but you shouldn't expect it to actually happen!" Frustrated, Jade threw her hands in the air, then turned a glare on Connor. "So tell me, how exactly were you able to _do_ that?"

Well, Connor thought to himself, this was one way to have his suspicions about Jade confirmed. She knew about magic, all right. Only, her magic seemed to be quite different than his. He sighed. "I suppose I should start from the beginning. About two years ago, when I was five, I…really wanted a biscuit, only my parents had put the tin at the top of the fridge where I couldn't reach. Now, you have to understand, I didn't just want a biscuit. I…had missed dinner, so I was really hungry. My parents weren't home, and there wasn't anything edible within reach, because Mum hadn't gone shopping recently. So I was craving those biscuits, and I was just so frustrated, I suppose, that my parents had deprived me of the only food source in the house. I was sitting there, just staring at the biscuit tin, fuming at the unfairness of it all, when the tin slid off the fridge and actually floated down to me." He paused to peek a look at Jade, hoping he'd toned down his situation at home enough that she hadn't caught on. There was no need for her to know that late dinners and neglected pantries were a consistent problem for Connor. Or, they had been, until Connor had learned to conjure his own food from thin air.

"So that's when I learned that magic was real," Connor continued a moment later. "I tried to do other things with my magic, but I eventually figured out that it wouldn't work unless I was really emotional about something. For a long time, even when I was emotional enough to do magic, I couldn't control the results. But after a while, I figured out how to direct the magic, once it came to me. And then with every passing month I needed less and less emotion to get to the magic. But that wasn't good enough. I didn't see why I couldn't use it at will. So I went to the library, and looked at some fantasy novels and some books about controlling your emotions. The fantasy novels didn't help much, but the books on controlling emotions all mentioned meditation, where you learn to clear your mind, relax your body, and not really think about anything. I decided to give it a try.

"It was pretty hard to learn. Stray thoughts would keep distracting me, and I'd keep getting itchy, or the position I was sitting in would get uncomfortable. But eventually I got the hang of it, and I was able to use it to find my magical core, where the magic comes from. And once I'd found it, I could call up the magic whenever I wanted. Now I'm pretty sure I can do whatever I want with it. It takes practice and concentration, to figure out how to do something specific. But once I get it a couple times, I can kind of force the magic into the shape I need without all the guesswork, and the…spell, I guess, becomes a lot easier to do." And there it was, a summary of all his efforts over the last two years.

The children lapsed into silence for a few minutes, Connor thinking about his journey in getting to this point, and Jade trying to reconcile the story with what she knew of Wiccan magick.

"So why tell me?" Jade eventually asked.

"Huh?" Connor said with his usual eloquence. Jade couldn't help smiling.

"I mean, you obviously didn't know that I'm Wiccan, much less that Wicca even exists. So if you didn't know, why ask me to meet you?" She had assumed, when she'd seen the note, that Connor somehow knew about her religion and wanted to talk to her about it. He hadn't sounded threatening, more curious, so Jade had obliged. She was bemused by the direction their conversation had gone.

"Oh, that." Connor shrugged. "Well, do you remember that day in the cafeteria, when I was, er, staring at you?" he blushed, recalling how queer he'd been that day.

Jade answered his question quite adequately with a smirk.

"Right. Well, there was a reason for that, beyond just daydreaming. I had goose bumps on my arm, like there was a fan blowing cold air at me, except there wasn't any air moving at all. On a whim, I grabbed a bit of magic. Not to use it, but just to be in contact with it. And when I did, I realized it wasn't air at all, but magic, and it was coming from _you_."

"And you've never felt magic coming from anyone else?" Jade asked, eyebrows furrowed as she tried to solve the puzzle before her.

Connor shook his head. "No, just you. I've been trying to see if I could feel it coming off of anyone else for the last couple days. But the only magic I can sense is yours."

That made no sense to Jade, no matter how she looked at it. While witches were certainly more in tune with their energy, and with the energies around them, everyone had energy. Everyone and everything had it, and witches didn't have any more than anyone else. That would be like saying only witches had souls, or that witches had bigger souls than the rest of humanity. Because that's what the energy was, really—an expression of the soul. "This still doesn't make any sense," she sighed.

"Well, it's true," Connor said a bit defensively. How ironic it would be, if even a witch wouldn't believe in his magic.

"I'm not saying you're lying," Jade assured the boy hurriedly. "I'm just saying that your experience of magick goes against everything I know."

"Well, haven't _you_ had anything strange happen around you when you were scared, or angry, or even just happy?" Connor probed, remembering his own bursts of accidental magic.

To her credit, Jade actually considered the question for a minute. "No," she said slowly, "I don't think I have. Nothing as obvious as floating biscuit tins, anyway." Connor slumped in his seat, and Jade wondered how they could pin down exactly what this magick was about. "I know," she burst out a moment later, turning excitedly to face Connor on the bench. "How would you like to come back home with me? I can introduce you to my family, and you can find out if you get the same feeling of magick from other witches."

Connor couldn't keep a look of shock from creeping across his face. "You're…inviting me back to your place?" he clarified, just to make sure.

"Yes?" Jade answered with bemusement. "I mean, if you're okay with that."

"Um, sure. I mean, I think I'd like that."

Jade smiled at the uncertain boy. "It's like you've never been invited to a friend's home before," she teased.

Connor hesitated for a moment. "I haven't, actually," he said simply.

It was Jade's turn to be shocked. "Oh. Really?" Thinking better of the question, she hurriedly went on. "I mean, it's fine if you haven't, it's just a bit surprising, is all. I really don't mean to be rude about it."

"It's fine," he told her, mostly to stop the rush of words coming from her mouth. "I don't mind it, really." It truly wasn't something he cared much about. He had friends in school, of course, but he'd never gone out of his way to get close to any of them. It was his own fault, really. He'd been completely obsessed with controlling his magic, not to mention his certainty that it had to be kept secret. He hadn't told anyone in all this time, and was still struggling a bit with the idea that Jade knew. He hoped he didn't come to regret confiding in his classmate.

"Well," Jade said as she stood, "in that case, let's get going. My home's just a couple blocks away." Connor shoved his reluctance aside and followed her. It was a good idea, after all, and he had to admit that he was curious to see where Jade lived, and what the other witches in her family were like. As they walked, Connor tried to picture exactly what he expected of Jade's family.

* * *

**A/N: **Thanks for reading, and please review! This is my first fiction, so I'm anxious to hear what my first readers think.

-Skittishly


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